SPORT IN THE JUNGLE

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4046, 26 April 1932, Page 2

SPORT IN THE JUNGLE

♦ TIGER AND HUNTER IN EARTHQUAKE CORNERED BY ROGUE ELEPHANT Sitting on a wooden “ machan,” or platform, halfway up a tree in the, middle of a jungle waiting for a tiger to return to its hidden kill must lie an uncanny experience at the best of times. But suppose an earthquake occurs just as the tiger appears! This is what actually happened to a friend of Mr George Hogan Knowles, the author of ‘ in the Grip of the Jungles ’ (says ‘John o’ London’s Weekly’). Everything was as still as death, ho said, when a low murmuring sound arose like distant thunder. “ Suddenly the grass in front of me heaves up, and the tiger’s .kill moves; and that that very instant that my tree, too, shakes violently a rush and a deafening roar nearly paralyse me. To my breathless astonishment, while 1 am obliging to the tree with my ‘ machan ’ at all angles, I see the lame tiger in a furious rage out before me from somewhere to protect his kill. His hair stands bristling up on his a relied back. He has apparently been eiouching by watching bis kill, and now actually thinks that somebody or something is pulling it away.” Then the shaking stops, and the tiger slinks back into cover again. The watching hunter has just found that the ropes supporting his “ machan ” are dangerously loose, when there is a gust of gritty wind followed by another rumbling, echoing crash: “ The kill distinctly lifts up—rolling over this time—and out comes the furious tiger again with a thunderous roar and seizes the kill desperately. He and his kill seem to be rolling, mixed np together on the ground, and, horror upon horror, my ‘ machan ’ is giving way! I am clutching the tree and my rifle in grim desperation, when suddenly the ropes burst, and the string-laced bed hangs and swings in the air. . . . At this terrible lament I hear big stones rattling down the hillside behind me, and 1 look up. There, to my unspeakable horror, 1 see the bare hill brows almost knocking against eacli other—swaying like the heads of drunken men.” The hunter miraculously escapes death amid the boulders that come thundering down and the trees that crash round him—and bags tlm tiger, a “ magnificent specimen which measured over 10ft!” CORNERED BY AN-ELEPHANT. But little things like tigers and earthquakes are a mere nothing to Mr Knowles. On one occasion, with his two sisters and a friend, Lieutenant 8., he wont to meet a party returning from a tiger shoot. He had been delayed in camp, and was hurrying to catch them up when ho heard Ins sisters scream. Never, he tells ns, has he covered 200 yds quicker in his life:— “ There Lieutenant 8., with wonderful pluck, is waving a thin cane in front of the trunk of an enormous wild tusker. Behind him my two poor sisters are clutching each other in terror and screaming wildly. Eacli time they attempt to move back in order to run the horrible monster with his huge, terrifying tusks—projecting in front like two white enamelled beams —makes a savage thrust forward, and they stand still in terror. . . . The next instant, supporting Lieutenant B. with a loud shout, I reach my sisters and draw them back, flourishing my stick under the huge elephant’s trunk Ho realises that it is a rogue elephant which has been terrorising the neighbourhood. W Idle the men continue to shout at the elephant the women manage to escape:-—- “ Looking up at his great head we concentrate desperately on his murderous eyes, like small red marbles, and wave our sticks high in the air. The brute has only to put out his trunk to grab us. But we begin to see red, too, and it is a fight of human will-power against the ungovernable instinct of wanton savagery. We know that our lives are at stake and we must drive the brute off. The slightest wavering or hesitation and we are lost!” But it is yet another victory for higher intelligence. Waving their sticks, they drive the monster back step by step. Suddenly its attention is caught by some coolies. A charge, and one poor, wretch is seized and crushed to death. But the white men escape, and some days later the rogue elephant is tracked down and pays the penalty for its folly in defying a white man. SAVED BY A NATIVE. Another time Mr Knowles and lus friend of the earthquake adventure were tiger shooting in the jungle, mounted on elephants. Once again without warning they conic face to face with a huge tusker. They dare not move an inch for fear of being charged. Tins time they cannot fix it with their eyes. They merely wait, hoping for the best; “We bear a crash through the underorowth a) our hack, and, to our unspeakable horror, wo see the hallnaked figure of a man suddenly darting past our trees right in front ol the tusker! It looks as if the thing in human form, whatever it might be, has suddenly gone mad. It appears that he is o-oimr to throw himself at the leet of the tusker. Bnt. no! With strange yells lie dances but live paces in trout of the brute, as ii to tantalise _ him. and then, as the monster in a paroxysm of fury turns on him with a terrific roar, as if a bomb were exploding. the agile figure skips to one side and dashes off in the direction of the valley from which the big elephant so silently emerged.” They seize the chance to lire a volley over the rogues head, making it lorget its tormentor and dash off through tbe trees. The plucky native was their buffalo-man. who had come up in time to risk bis life for theirs. Saved again. Mr Knowles once bad a weird experience in the deserted city ol FatehpnrSlkri. built by Akbar, the great Mogul Emperor ol the sixteenth century. With a young Baja, to whom be was tutor. Mr Knowles went to look tor a panther which was said to haunt tlie empty courts and An old lakir offered to guide them. J bey secured a carnage to drive them Irom Airra on a certain day, and were told that the fakir had gone on ahead. Arriving at Ibe dead city. “ Ibe driver and bis small male offered to carry our rides,

and accompanied us up the vast flight of steps. . . . Reaching the top of tl/c pavement, we beheld the aged fakir, standing alone under a spacious, central dome—when, to our sudden astonishment, the driver and the boy dropped our rifles with a yell of terror, as it seemed, and fled, leaping down the stairway as fast as they could go. In a few moments our coach was rattling away in a cloud of dust.” NEARLY A TRAGEDY. The figure* of the fakir flits from place to place, and they follow. They come upon the panther in a small courtyard “ but as mv rifle goes up I notice ’with anxiety' that the fakir—who seemed to have completely vanished as we entered the courtyard—suddenly, at the critical moment, conies gliding in through the archway to the left of the high wall, which rears up on the other side of the panther and appears completely to imprison him. Horrors; the foolish man seems to be advancing, and wo dare not lire for fear of a ricochet—from that high, stone nail in front of us— hitting him. “ Run! ” I shout to the fakir in desperation; but a rush from the infuriated panther at bav instantly drowns my voice. The Ra'ia is down, with the spotted brute on top of him ! The muzzle of my rifle, swinging round instinctively to the onslaught. is almost touching the open jaws'of the fiend, and 1 pull the trigger.... ” . They did not see the fakir again, but alter walking a mile or two they found their coach by the roadside. The driver, trembling with fear, poured out an incoherent story about the. fakir not having gone to the dead city at all: We asked the man to be more explicit. “The fakir died at Agra,” he said, “ two days ago. and was cremated on the banks of the river. It was his ‘ bhoot ’ (ghost) we saw under the Great Gateway this afternoon, and the boy and J,” he said, “were so dumbfounded that we fled in terror.” Hut ghost or no ghost, Mr Knowles savs he never found a satisfactory solution of the problem. Mr Knowles tells wonderful stories of things he has seen—a panther, wishing to catch a monkey, camouflaging itself as one; a deer pretending to be badly hurt in order to distract attention from her young; tir r cubs being taught to hunt'; fights to the death between elephant and tiger; fish hawks at work on a river, and so on. Altogether Mr Knowles’s book is crammed with incident, and should interest equally those who, like the author himself, think nothing of shooting a couple of tigers before breakfast and those who have never in their lives bagged anything larger than sparrows.